that chanted on their branches, not disturbed with the least breath of a favourable Zephyrus. Seeing thus the accord of the land and sea, casting a fresh gaze on the water nymphs, he began to consider how Venus was feigned by the poets to spring of the froth of the seas, which drave him straight into a deep conjecture of the inconstancy of love, that, as if Luna were his loadstar, had every minute ebbs and tides, sometime overflowing the banks of Fortune with a gracious look, lightened from the eyes of a favourable lover, otherwhiles ebbing to the dangerous shelf of Despair, with the piercing frown of a froward mistress. MENAPHON, in this brown study, calling to mind certain aphorisms that Avarreon had penned down as principles of Love's follies, being as deep an enemy to fancy as Narcissus was to affection, began thus to scoff at Venus' deity.

"MENAPHON, thy mind's favours are greater than thy wealth's fortunes, thy thoughts higher than thy birth, and thy private conceit better than thy public esteem. Thou art a shepherd, MEN APHON, who in feeding of thy flock findest out nature's secrecy, and in preventing thy lambs' prejudice, conceitest the astronomical motions of the heavens; holding thy sheep-walks to yield as great philosophy as the ancients discourse in their learned academies. Thou countest labour as the Indians do their chrysocolla, wherewith they try every metal, and thou examine every action. Content sitteth in thy mind as Neptune in his sea-throne, who with his trident mace appeaseth every storm. When thou seest the heavens frown, thou thinkest on thy faults; and a clear sky putteth thee in mind of grace: the summer's glory tells thee of youth's vanity; the winter's parched leaves of age's declining weakness. Thus in a mirror thou measurest thy deeds with equal and considerate motions, and by being a shepherd findest that which kings want in their royalties. Envy overlooketh thee, renting with the winds the pine-trees of Ida, when the Afric shrubs wave not a leaf with the tempest. Thine eyes are veiled with content, that thou canst not

gaze so high as ambition, and for love;" and with that, in naming of love, the shepherd fell into a great laughter. “Love, MENAPHON: why of all follies that ever poets feigned, or men faulted with, this foolish imagination of love is the greatest. Venus, forsooth, for her wanton escapes must be a goddess, and her bastard a deity. Cupid must be young and ever a boy, to prove that love is fond and witless; wings to make him inconstant, and arrows whereby to shew him fearful; blind (or all were not worth a pin), to prove that Cupid's level is both without aim and reason: thus is the god, and such are his votaries. As soon as our shepherds of Arcadia settle themselves to fancy, and wear the characters of Venus stamped in their foreheads, straight their attire must be quaint, their looks full of amours, as their god's quiver is full of arrows; their eyes holding smiles and tears, to leap out at their mistress' favours or her frowns; sighs must fly as figures of their thoughts, and every wrinkle must be tempered with a passion: thus suited in outward proportion, and made excellent in inward constitution, they straight repair to take view of their mistress's beauty. She, as one observant unto Venus' principles, first tyeth love in her tresses, and wraps affection in the trammels of her hair; snaring our swains in her locks, as Mars in the net; holding in her forehead fortune's calendar, either to assign dismal influence, or some favourable aspect. If a wrinkle appear in her brow, then our shepherd must put on his working-day face, and frame nought but doleful madrigals of sorrow; if a dimple grace her cheek, the heavens cannot prove fatal to our kind-hearted lovers; if she seem coy, then poems of death mounted upon deepdrawn sighs, fly from their master to sue for some favour, alleging how death at the least may date his misery: to be brief, as upon the shores of Lapanthe the winds continue never one day in one quarter, so the thoughts of a lover never continue scarce a minute in one passion; but as fortune's globe so is fancy's case, variable and inconstant.

"If lovers' sorrows then be like Sisiphus' turmoils, and their favours like honey bought with gall, let poor MENAPHON then live at labour, and make esteem of Venus as of Mars his concubine; and as the Cimbrians hold their idols in account but in every tempest, so make Cupid a god but when thou art overpained with passions, and then MENA PHON will never love; for as long as thou temperest thy hands with labours, thou canst not fetter thy thoughts with loves. And in this satirical humour, smiling at his own conceits, he took his pipe in his hand, and between every report of his instrument sung a stanza to this effect.

MENAPHON, having ended his roundelay, rose up, thinking to pass from the mountain down to the valley, casting his eye to the seaside, espied certain fragments of a broken ship floating upon the waves, and sundry persons driven upon the shore like a calm, walking all wet and weary upon the sands: wondering at this strange sight, he stood amazed; yet desirous to see the event of this accident, he shrouded himself, to rest unespied till he might perceive what would happen: at last he might descry it was a woman holding a child in her arms, and an old man directing her, as it were her guide. These three (as distressed wrecks) preserved by some further fore-pointing fate, coveted to climb the mountains, the better to use the favour of the sun to dry their drenched apparel, at last crawled up where poor MEN APHON lay close, and resting them under a bush, the old man did nothing but send out sighs, and the woman ceased not from streaming forth rivulets of tears, that hung on her cheeks like the drops of pearled dew upon the riches of Flora. The poor babe was the touchstone of his mother's passions; for when he smiled and lay laughing in her lap, were her heart never so deeply overcharged with her present sorrows, yet, kissing the pretty infant, she lightened out smiles from those cheeks that were furrowed with continual sources of tears; but if he cried, then sighs as smokes, and sobs as thunder-cracks, foreran those showers that which redoubled distress distilled from her eyes: thus with

pretty inconstant passions trimming up her baby, and at last to lull him asleep, she warbled out of her woeful breast this ditty.

SEPHESTIA'S SONG TO HER CHILD.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee:
When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.
Mother's wag, pretty boy,

Father's sorrow, father's joy!
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe,
Fortune changed made him so :
When he had left his pretty boy,

Last his sorrow, first his joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee:
When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.
Streaming tears that never stint,

Like pearl drops from a flint,
Fell by course from his eyes,
That one another's place supplies:

Thus he griev'd in every part,

Tears of blood fell from his heart,
When he left his pretty boy,

Father's sorrow, father's joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee:

When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee.

The wanton smiled, father wept,

Mother cried, baby leapt :

More he crowed, more he cried,
Nature could not sorrow hide.

He must go, he must kiss

Child and mother, baby bliss: